


Read You Like a Magazine

by thoughtsappear



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Astral Projection, Character Study, Depression, Dreams, Dreamsharing, F/M, Gen, Mentions of Taylor Swift, Psychic Abilities, Set during S1, Vague references to child abuse, penny has a heart of gold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:58:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20274070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/pseuds/thoughtsappear
Summary: People were like houses.Penny had discovered this at a young age, and then again when he came into his psychic abilities. Some people had cute little houses with tidy lawns and white picket fences and a duck mailbox. Some had scraggly lawns and garages that were crammed full of broken power tools. He learned that some people went through their lives with their doors unlocked, and someone like him could slip right in, and walk around, look in all the drawers and under all the beds and figure them out, simple and quick. There were people who kept themselves locked up tight, with doors and windows barred. Then there were the rare types that would allow someone into the front room, the place for receiving quests that had no real purpose other than providing an image. But the rest of the house was in shambles, and he was not allowed to peek into any of those rooms.





	Read You Like a Magazine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Basic_instinct40](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basic_instinct40/gifts).

People were like houses.

Penny had discovered this at a young age, and then again when he came into his psychic abilities. Some people had cute little houses with tidy lawns and white picket fences and a duck mailbox. Some had scraggly lawns and garages that were crammed full of broken power tools. He learned that some people went through their lives with their doors unlocked, and someone like him could slip right in, and walk around, look in all the drawers and under all the beds and figure them out, simple and quick. There were people who kept themselves locked up tight, with doors and windows barred. Then there were the rare types that would allow someone into the front room, the place for receiving quests that had no real purpose other than providing an image. But the rest of the house was in shambles, and he was not allowed to peek into any of those rooms.

Most magicians were warded. Their minds locked up tight, and double bolted. It was a select few that weren’t and then a couple whose wards were like automatic doors that merely gave an appearance of being closed until someone approached. At Brakebills, Penny decided not to mess with people’s minds unless they gave him a reason.

Unfortunately, the first person to give him a reason was a person whose wards were non existent. Quentin Coldwater’s mind was like a 24 hour convenience store, where the doors were never locked and he was always thinking. His thoughts were loud, anxious and he had a tendency to switch on a dime. Somehow they thought putting the two of them together was a good idea.

He couldn’t think of a worse roommate. And if Penny complained, instead of shutting up, the kid thought even harder, and sometimes he had songs in his head. For some reason the dumbass really loved Taylor Swift. Penny would have preferred literally anything else. 

Penny stepped into Quentin’s head and found it uncomfortable in a way he wasn’t ready for. He’d been in plenty of heads in his life time, all different people, different ages, different backgrounds. Most were just short little glimpses of something bigger, and he didn’t push too far. But Quentin’s head was different. He was so afraid of everything around him and all Penny had to do was look into a room and he would see everything Quentin seemed so set on hiding from the world.

Penny had never been depressed. He considered himself lucky because he’d known so many people who were. Their minds seemed off limits, but he couldn’t help but wonder why they felt that way. Looking into Quentin’s mind helped him understand. He found it nearly overwhelming.

He apologized for the first time, seeing the look on Quentin’s face. Then he immediately shut the connection and ignored him for the rest of the night. But Quentin’s mind was so busy and so poorly warded, that things slopped over to Penny like water in an overflowing bathtub.

He wondered who Julia was, and why Quentin thought about her so much. 

“Fix your wards!” he snapped. 

Quentin’s wards were better for the next few days, but then it was Taylor Swift all the time again and Penny compensated by playing a Bush CD the next day to try to replace it with Glycerine. It didn’t work. Quentin had terrible taste in music. And men too, since he seemed slightly obsessed with that dude Eliot who dressed like was in one of those PBS specials. 

Penny wasn’t sure what he should do. He tried his best not to eavesdrop on Quentin but he made it kind of hard. 

“Your wards are shit,” he said. He went to Quentin’s backpack, pulled out the magic defense textbook, thumbed to the index, found “mental warding” and whipped it to page 236. Then Penny dropped the book in front of him with a heavy thunk that rattled the desk and made Quentin flinch.

His wards were better after that. But sometimes his thoughts were so loud.

Penny found ways he could help Quentin without helping Quentin. It was the kind of stuff he’d do for his mother when he was a boy. He’d never told her he could read her mind, but he knew how she’d react if he had. His mother had been a religious woman, and superstitious on top of that. If he’d admitted half the things he could do, she’d believe he was possessed by some demon or worse. 

His mother would wonder where she left something, or if she’d remembered to turn the oven off, or what she needed at the store, and Penny would find a way to give her that information. He hoped it was subtle. He’d learned how to tune most people out and how to pick through people’s heads as if he were sorting through books on a shelf, ignoring everything but the one you wanted. He used this to great effect with his mother, helping her when she was frustrated.

Every time he pointed out that she had already locked the door, she would smile and kiss the top of his head, and tell him something like, “You always know what I’m thinking.”

When her thoughts got ugly or worried or scared, Penny found it a lot harder to help her. But he tried. Years later, he used this experience to deal with his new roommate. 

Quentin would forget his key, and so Penny would put it in his pocket when he left their dorm and throw it at him during study hall. “You forgot this, dumbass.”

Quentin would worry about a lot of different things, and Penny could tell very few of them were likely to happen. His anxiety was irrational, and it was almost like arguing with a very stubborn child who wouldn’t listen to reason. When his mind would get clouded over with those thoughts, Penny would start throwing him the little yellow football he’d packed with some other dumb stuff in his hurry to leave his last apartment. Quentin acted like he’d never seen a ball in his life, but having just the tiniest thing to focus on other than his rapidly spiraling thoughts, usually brought him out of it. It was good for both of them.

When Quentin lost a sock or had a headache, Penny would put the sock in his laundry without saying anything, and he would leave the medicine cabinet ajar with the ibuprofen bottle showing.

All these little things made life easier for Quentin. They made Quentin feel better, and his thoughts were easier to block out when he was happy. Penny could forgive him for the stupid music on those days.

But Kady would laugh at him when he sang Blank Space in the shower.

He liked making Kady laugh. Her voice was throaty and rich, and when she sang in the shower, she chose old bluesy artists like Etta James. She was a bit of a show off, and so he pretended not to listen, only to start singing the same song she’d been performing an hour later while they were getting a cup of coffee or pretending to study in the quad. 

She always hit him with her closest weapon, sometimes a book, sometimes just her fist and called him an asshole, but he loved it.

Kady’s dreams were like her. He hadn’t been invited in, and when he got a peek inside, he was more confused than ever before. She didn’t quite make sense at times. She was fractured, and he wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or not.

When they slept together, she relaxed, but her mind was still a bit of a muddle. She was one of the few people he knew that could tell when he was trying to peek and she would usually do something like kick him under the table or bite his ear if they were in bed together.

“Stop peeking,” she’d say. “If I wanted you to know something, I’d tell you.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He sometimes wondered if he was only falling in love with the version of Kady he couldn’t see. If he could get past her wards, what was left? Part of the fun of being with a girl was not being able to read her mind. Even if it did get him in trouble occasionally. 

One night, they were in bed together and Kady fell asleep with her head on his chest. He wasn’t tired yet and he didn’t dare move to disturb her. He started practicing astral projecting around the room, while holding her. 

Astral projection was a new trick. Penny hadn’t quite mastered the finer points of it. Astral projection felt like dreaming. He would close his eyes and suddenly be floating, his body still in bed or sitting on a yoga mat. It was hard to maintain for long periods of time. People would interrupt him, and he’d be pulled back into his body. Having a body came with so much baggage. Too much pain and fear and weight. He liked being able to throw it all away, even if just for an afternoon or a short repose. 

He was getting better at it. He could avoid the smaller distractions, and stay focused. He could move farther away from his body and remain tethered. He could avoid getting sucked into people’s heads or dreams for longer periods of time. On a night with Kady, where the two of them were alone, he had plenty of time to try advanced techniques.

Once he’d mastered the room, he tried leaving the house, then eventually farther and farther from the cottage. When he came back to his body, he took a brief moment to admire the two of them curled up together in bed. Her face was mostly hidden by a mass of that addictive curly hair, but he could see the twin half moons of her lashes against her cheeks. That was when he realized he was in too deep. She owned him now. 

He slipped back into his body like an old shoe, and felt the warmth of her breath on his neck, and he heard just one of her thoughts slip through.

It was more a picture than a coherent thought, but he understood it all the same.

_They can never know the truth._

Her fear was enough to make him shudder and hold her closer. He had his own nightmares that night.

==

Looking back, Penny realized he’d been set up to get into Brakebills. He’d been at a gas station, filling up his car, bored to tears and mind hopping. The woman in the car next to him was thinking about food. The man at the register was wondering if he could turn of the security cameras and steal a pack of cigarettes. The kid in the store was counting his money in his pocket, trying to make sure he had enough for his candy bar.

An elegant BMW drove up next to him. Penny studied the car, impressed by such a fine vehicle in such a dumpy town. Penny finished pumping his gas and reached into his open window to take a swig of his gatorade bottle. He kept his eyes on the car. A tall man in a suit got out and began to pump gas for the BMW. Penny couldn’t help himself. He peeked into his mind, finding it a little harder to read than the average man. When his thoughts registered, Penny shuddered. He was thinking about lighting a match and blowing the whole station up. His face remained blank, even as he fantasized about the explosion, and the destruction. He didn’t care how many people he killed or what the consequences were. Penny’s hand tightened around the gatorade bottle and he pulled it away from his lips. He took a few steps toward the BMW, acting as if he was going to throw it away. The man reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out a cigarette case and a match book. Penny took another step toward him. The man had yet to acknowledge him. His thoughts had replaced Penny’s. He lit a cigarette and his hand paused with the match. Penny walked up with his gatorade and doused him with the mostly empty bottle. The match went out, the cigarette glowed. The two of them had a silent stare down. Penny didn’t apologize. He challenged the man to fight him. Instead, he took a drag off the cigarette and laughed. 

The man smiled at him and said, “You’ll do fine.”

Penny had no idea what he was talking about, but the man patted him on the shoulder and handed him a card. It had an address and a strange bee symbol on the back.

“Don’t be late,” the man said, still puffing on his cigarette. Penny jumped into his car and drove, not sure if this was the best or the dumbest thing he’d ever done.

When he got to the address, he was ready to turn tail and run, but then an attractive woman in her mid thirties with a tight blouse looked at him over a book. “William Adiyodi?”

“Penny,” he told her, flinching at the name as he always did.

“We’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Come with me please.”

Penny tried to read her mind, but it was like trying to jump a fence while wearing roller skates. 

“You’re talented,” she said, not turning her head. “You’ll find most people here are warded up tight and only sloppy magicians will let anything out.”

She stopped in front of a large classroom and held the door open. “Find a seat, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you later.” 

Penny robotically took a seat near the back and stared at the test in front of him. He was never good at tests unless he cheated, which was often and always. He had a feeling cheating on this test would be extremely difficult, especially with the way the woman’s mind had been. The men in the front of the room wore terse expressions, and he couldn’t even find their minds in the chaos of people surrounding him. So much confusion and chaos. Everyone here was as confused and bewildered as he was. He’d been sitting alone for a few minutes when a dude with floppy hair and a dorky-looking outfit took a seat next to him. 

Penny could see him struggle to remove his sweater out of the corner of his eye. He kept working on the test, but his thoughts hit Penny in the back like a punch.

_I don’t belong here._

==

After the test, a bunch of old dudes led Penny into a small room. They sat behind a desk, looking at him with their noses turned up and Penny wanted to punch them all in their stupid faces. He crossed his arms across his chest and returned their dirty looks. He was startled when the door behind him opened, and the dean walked in.

He gave Penny a little nod and took the open spot at the head of the table. 

“What can you do?” he asked. The people at the table were all looking at papers and Penny rolled his eyes.

“I’m not a trained puppy,” Penny said. “I don’t perform on command.”

Dean Fogg just looked down. “It says here you’ve demonstrated psychic ability from a young age. What number am I thinking of?”

Penny laughed. “You’re thinking about the bottle of scotch you have under your desk and wondering if it’s too early to break it out. You hate testing days.”

“Impressive,” Fogg said, barely looking up from his hands on the desk. His stoic face would have given him away even if his mind wasn’t teeming with his boredom. “Try again.”

Penny reached for Fogg’s mind a second time, and found it harder to find. Where before he’d been able to see his thoughts clear as day, now they seemed foggy and dim. 

He could feel all the people in the room staring at him, which only added fuel to his fire, and made him work harder to see what was on Fogg’s mind. The thoughts were there, he just had to concentrate harder to get them. One of the men watching cleared his throat, and Penny fought an urge to throw a middle finger in his direction. The pressure mounted, and Penny’s head throbbed, but then he could see Fogg’s thoughts for long enough to make sense of them.

“You were thinking about your first spell,” he said. He relaxed, and his body went slack. Penny saw Fogg’s eyes narrow and he glanced at the men next to him.

“Can you demonstrate it?” he asked.

Penny cracked his knuckles once and tried to imitate the gestures he’d seen in Fogg’s head. He curled his fingers into a fist, then slowly released them.

The pen in Fogg’s pocket flew across the room and landed in Penny’s hand. He stared at the pen, not sure how it got there, but also impressed with himself.

“Welcome to Brakebills,” Fogg said, standing up and taking back the pen in a similar hand motion.

==

The people in Brakebills were not his people. So many of them were assholes, or weird, or racist, or worse. He hated the other psychics, but at least the physical kids had good parties. They also had much more interesting dreams. 

Penny liked to dream jump. You could tell a lot about a person by what they dreamed about. You could tell even more about them by their nightmares. Nightmares were tricky though. They were scary, obviously, but they also held more danger to him. Things Penny found frightening didn’t matter in a nightmare, all that mattered was that the dreamer found them upsetting. There was a danger of being harmed by an angry or defensive dreamer’s mind. They didn’t often like being eavesdropped on. 

The person at the Physical Kids cottage who had nightmares the most often was not the one he suspected it would be. It wasn’t Quentin, whose dreams ranged from oversleeping before a test to nerdy threesomes with Princess Leia and Han Solo. It wasn’t Margo’s who dreamed a lot about music videos from the 80’s for some reason. It wasn’t even Alice, who didn’t dream most nights, but when she did, they were usually about letting down her family or her brother Charlie. He went easier on her after those nights. 

It was Eliot.

Eliot’s nightmares were hard to ignore. Some nights they were common things, falling from a great height, someone shooting you with a gun and losing the ability to run, etc. Those were the nightmares Penny had learned to avoid. Eliot’s mind was like a parlor, with a large open room decorated to impress, looking open and inviting. But no one was allowed upstairs.

When he had nightmares, those wards slipped, and sometimes Penny was offered a look at the things Eliot was hiding. There were secrets in those dreams. 

Penny found himself standing in an old dusty farm house. He could smell earth, and manure and stale sweat. There was a man standing in front of a stove and a little boy sitting at a kitchen table, his legs too short to touch the ground. The man was yelling, but no matter what Penny did, no matter which direction he faced, he couldn’t see the man from the front. The words he was yelling were angry and mean, but they didn’t seem to be in any language, just a mindless rant. He focused his attention at the boy sitting alone. The little boy was staring at the table, looking for patterns in the wood grain. Tears streamed down his cheeks and everytime the man shouted, more tears fell. The little boy wiped his face with his sleeve and kept his head down, trying his best not to let him see.

“I’m sorry Dad,” he snuffled into his elbow. Curls hung in his eyes. Penny made eye contact with him and the dream boy gasped in surprise. Penny was looking at a young Eliot. He could see the child realize who Penny was, and the fear and shame in his eyes was like nothing Penny had even seen in someone so young. He looked at Eliot’s dad, who continued to berate the young man, not affected by anything else around him. Penny wanted to do something, punch him or shut him up but he knew this dream wasn’t his. He was a trespasser.

A door slammed somewhere in the cottage and it had a similar effect on Penny, who found himself ripped out of Eliot’s dream and flung back into his bed. He reached for Eliot’s mind, and found him awake.

“Stay out of my fucking head,” he snarled, and Penny found the wards back, stronger than ever.

Eliot walked down the stairs the next morning, and other than the slightest tinge of red in the corner of his eyes, there was no hint of anything that had happened. He was cold to Penny, but no colder than he had been before. But when he found Eliot’s eyes across the party that night, he saw a hint of sadness that wasn’t there before. Even though he knew Eliot’s mind was off limits, he could tell what he was thinking.

_Please don’t tell anyone. _

Penny knew so much about people. He didn’t like knowing things he wasn’t supposed to know. If people offered the information freely, he accepted it, but there were times when people’s minds vomited up thoughts and feelings without any reservations. Penny was like a custodian, tidying up the remains. He’d keep Eliot’s secrets, just like he’d keep everyone else’s.

==

**Author's Note:**

> Written to support Jason Ralph's Covenant House International Sleep Out Fundraiser. Check out @Drabbles4Jason on Twitter to see how you can get one of your own!
> 
> Thanks to basic_instinct for the donation!!
> 
> And thank you to my dear beta Declan. You've done it again!


End file.
